The road passes the fertile soil and deep green grass of the Willamette where it hits the forested hills towards where Jim Anglin use to play.

Sad to say today is his memorial service in Lebanon. Can't say I'm pleased at all to be heading this direction. There's folks in your life ya like but don't get around to calling or hanging with? That's the case here, and I'm kicking my ass that I let that go due to my laziness. I put Elton John in the CD player. The track clicks to "Funeral for a Friend" just outside of town.

I turn it up and get mentally lost in the reverie.

Pass through town and don't see the Chapel. On the way back, 15 min before the service is scheduled to start, a long line of various Firetrucks, lights flashing and polished to the nines, pass slowly towards me and turn south. I get out of my car, with plenty of time on my hands till they pass and ask the officer who's got all the traffic stopped, "Is this Jim's funeral?" and I get an affirmative and somber nod.

The sight of a parking lot full of firemen and their machinery is a sight to behold. I pass them on the way in the door. I'd heard of Jim's passing in Las Vegas. It's the strangest thing in that I was thinking of Jim when Ujahn and I were coming down from dream of wild turkeys Monday 11-5-07, which I think I remember Jim saying was his fav climb in the world.

I was thinking of several related Jim things as well including the pics he'd posted of his last red rocks trip where my poor memory was trying to remember if he'd repeated turkeys with Joanne Uriste, the fa of that route. I couldn't remember the route, but I remember the sparkle in Jim's eye, which the camera captured.

Since Jim isn't hardly ever in my thoughts, I was shocked and surprised on the return trip to town , no more than 2 hours later, to see several phone messages. (everyone who knows me knows I never listen to them so they don't typically leave them and I don't hardly ever get them) As I'm also down here for business, I assumed it was a crisis at work. This was shocking as I have a fully trained group who are conditioned to handle every extingency, so that I can go to ...say...Nepal, for 4 weeks and not carry a sat phone.

It was my friends leaving the message that Jim has died. My stomach tightened up, and I was in shocked disbelief. Jim was the kind of person that if we could all be a bit more like, the world would be a better place. His passing leaves a void in the world and a sadness in my heart. Inexplicably and even more shocking is that he slipped off the descent trail hiking into the crag and died. An expert climber becoming the first fatality at this location in Smith Rocks.

It was nice to see Joseph's Cascadeclimbers.com pic of him on Beacon, it brought back a memory of Joseph, Jim and I doing Young warriors, and although Jim had been climbing out there a lot that spring, he hadn't ever done that route. Jim led the long 3rd pitch and sure enough got off route, despite our earlier efforts to describe that wandering 3rd pitch to him. His eyes were twinkling and he was fairly humored when we climbed up to see him looking exactly like a treed raccoon way the hell up the wrong direction belaying from an off route slab and pointed out the errors of his ways.

I wish it wasn't true. Wish it was somebody else. Can't believe someone so near invincible simply fell off a trail and died. But alas……..people are filing into the Chapel for the service…music plays quietly in the background.

Soon firemen parade in mass, about 60 are there to pay their respects and say good by. The preacher steps up and starts the eulogy…..soon enough he puts on Jimmy Buffets "Come Monday", a song which Jim had liked and we listen in silence…the preacher talks some more, and then they play "Arms Of An Angel by Sarah McLachlan, the soulful anguished lyrics rise in loud silence in the room…later folks get up and give some testament to who Jim was and tell some stories. I'm wondering if I should get up and tell how I'd almost accidentally killed Jim over 25 years earlier, and how that experience had caused me to respect the man all the more, and decide that this might not be the time. They preacher says maybe 2 more testaments before he ends the service, and since I cannot summon the courage to step up, the service ends in 2 hours flat with the traditional firemans bell ringing. I feel dull, sad and flat, stop over and check in with Joseph who's over on the other side of the place with Joanne Urise who'd come up from Red Rocks area to say good by. I touch base with a few folks on the way out the door, grab a plate of food for the road and leave, still sad and feeling like I want to be alone and in the quiet.

Goodbye Jim, my turn will come soon enough, but I'm sad you can't be here with us and checked out first. Your hundreds of first ascents and a wide swath of family and friends memories remain as testament to your passage and productive time here with us.

It is a reminder to all of us that the clock it ticking. To treat each other just a bit better, to laugh at our fellow mans follies instead of yelling and displaying anger, to help out a soul who needs it, and remember that in the end, our end is all too near, sometimes shockingly so.

Jim was a super nice guy. I met him up in the woods near Mt Hood where he had been puting up route after route. He was full of knowledge and information and the few times we spoke he always had to get back to his route, but said we needed to set down and compare routes that we had both done. He gave us directions to another crag that he had been putting routes up on, and what a find that turned out to be. His final route is just as you get to the main crag at Area 51, first line. It is mixed bolts and trad gear, and I believe it is 10b or so. I have not done it yet, but am waiting for a quiet sunny day and am going to lead it with my silent partner knowing Jim is on the other end. Peace be with him, a class act. Thanks Jim for all the great routes and beta. You the man.

Please bear with me… I have hesitated a long while in doing this, but it’s time I think…

I haven’t touched boot to stone for almost ten years, yet my brief time on that stone has remained among my most cherished memories. Jim was a part of that…

After receiving a short, terse email from a friend in Oregon that read in part “Contact me immediately about Jim Anglin”. I called, and was instantly devastated to learn that Jim had passed away… We spent some time talking about Jim, but soon I had to hang up as words were just escaping me. I got online, and in moments I had read about the fall, something I never in a million years would have believed could happen to Jim, of all people…not the Jim I knew… Something must have happened to make him fall… All I could think of was that some medical event occurred to either cause him to lose balance, pass out, something… But to think Jim Anglin simply fell off a path? Not possible, my mind insisted…

I had been back in the general area he is supposed to have fallen from many, many years before… The ways down are indeed exposed, some more so than others, but Jim falling on a fourth-class descent? It couldn’t be … but sadly it was… And so I was left to do nothing more than mourn…

Engrossed in memory, I went and dug out what climbing gear I have left from the days I used to practice the sport, and began going through my dwindling stock. I found that I still have several ‘biners that I acquired from Jim way back in the late 80’s. On them, some quite faintly, you can still make out the scrawled initials, JA. 3 Bonaiti’s, a Salewa, an Eiger, and 2 SMC’s…these are the only remaining physical reminders I have of the man.

Jim and I first met at his home in Lebanon, Oregon shortly after I was hired full-time at the FD in the next town to the East along Hwy 20…Sweet Home. A friend and fellow Paramedic, upon learning that I had taken a beginners rock climbing class at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, told me that I should get in touch with a guy he called “Danglin’ Anglin” at LFD… He told me that Jim got that name due to his propensity for being found dangling from a fingerboard mounted above a doorway in the Lebanon firehall on a pretty regular basis.

In any case, at our first meeting, I was impressed with this friendly, peaceful guy who seemed so perfectly at ease with himself and the world. I honestly don’t recall much other than impressions from that meeting, and that he generously offered me some of his older gear at a ridiculously low price to get started out with (a buck a ‘biner as I recall)…I had absolutely no gear at the time, but I was consumed with passion for my newly acquired pursuit. I think he saw that. The ones he gave me are pieces that he said he would still trust, and just based on first impressions I figured I could trust them as well…

I ran into Jim fairly regularly after that, as we both worked in the same fields in adjoining jurisdictions. Monthly case reviews would usually find us saying “Hi” and sometimes making small talk about how my climbing was progressing, or of some route he thought I should give a try…all dependent on, and in his estimation, within my skill level. Jim always had encouragement…not once had I ever heard a negative remark from him.

The absolute best experience I ever had in the relatively short time I climbed was during one summer in the Menagerie Wilderness. A friend, Mark Hilliker, and I had been on Rooster Rock that day and hiking out, we ran into Jim… He told us that the next day he and several friends were going to be climbing on another small spire hidden there in the trees west of the Rabbit Ears (please forgive me if memory fails me here, but I think that was the approximate location.) and invited us to join the group.

We joined them the next day, guided there both by the directions Jim had given us, and when closer, by the occasional laughter, voices, or clinking of gear heard faintly through the trees. Arriving, Mark and I found ourselves in some pretty heady company indeed…particularly considering the unabashed newbies we were at the time.

Jim was there of course, along with Tom Bauman, I believe Kent Benesch was another present, and Paul Fry…(I had climbed a short roadside route on Hwy 20 that Paul had established earlier that year if I am remembering correctly called “Road Scholar”) I am ashamed to admit that there were a few other climbers there that day I cannot remember to save my life… If any of you read this, and were among those present, please accept my apology for my poor memory…though some of the names in the threads devoted to Jim that I have read seemed very familiar…

That day the climbing I saw and the apparent ease with which it was accomplished amazed me. Among other things, I was able to watch Tom Bauman drilling from a stance that I thought only a fly could have stood on, banging in a star drill like it was nothing… I watched Jim skim over another route effortlessly, while I later followed it slapping and clawing almost the whole way. Somehow he encouraged and cajoled me to the top… What impressed me most that day was the graciousness of everyone there… Not once was I made to feel as if I didn’t belong… This, while obviously floundering in a group whose climbing skill at even its lowest capacity far, far exceeded my best day on stone up to that point. I was present among considerable skill that day… To say I was awed by it is an understatement…

I remember when Jim made a point of mentioning that I was making positive strides in my climbing… I felt humbled…and proud too that he thought enough to say so…

That night, at camp on the old logging road outside the back border of the Menagerie, we all sat around a campfire sharing a couple beers and stories… The beers I shared in, but the stories… I listened…stories of my own I had yet to acquire. I remember feeling just slightly fuzzy and relaxed from the beer and listening and laughing a lot as others related various stories about routes climbed, falls taken, refrigerator-sized blocks being ridden as they came off the face, etc… It was peaceful, relaxed, warm, and I felt accepted as at least an aspiring rock climber. There was friendly ribbing, memories shared, and finally, as Tom later said goodnight and crawled into his tent, a reluctant (on my part) departure for home in the dark… The absolute best memory I have of my climbing days…

I have, for the last couple of years read and re-read the tributes paid to Jim on this and other forums. I have copied all the pictures posted of him on various climbs with that ever-present smile and great twinkle in his eye. I have shed many tears, and bitterly regretted never staying closer to the man for whom I still, and will always hold an almost reverential respect. I could have learned so very much more from him had I not become, and then remained, so deeply entrenched in my own problems… Perhaps I would still be climbing…

Yes, I am sad for myself…sad because Jim was a great positive influence and role model that I just didn’t incorporate into my life the way I should have… I should have made the time…

I am sadder still for his family, and his other, closer friends… I can’t imagine how devastating it must have been to lose so precious a soul… I can only feel my own sense of loss…

Jim, if there’s a place that exists where you can somehow see or sense anything from this world, know that I miss you, greatly, and will never forget you… Thank you so very much for your graciousness, your encouragement, your generosity, and your friendship…

It never fails to bring a smile to my face, and inevitably, a tear or two to my eye any time I think of you Jim. I know you would tell me that the tears are wasted, but they are my measure of loss. I would feel odd should they not be shed, so just take them as a measure of my respect. I still miss you Jim...I hate this time of year.